Posted By kruzer on March 24, 2009

Dearest: Your name woke me this morning: I found my lips piping their song before I was well back into my body out of dreams. I wonder if the rogues babble when my spirit is nesting? Last night you were a high tree and I was in it, the wind blowing us both; but I forget the rest,—whatever, it was enough to make me wake happy.

There are dreams that go out like candle-light directly one opens the shutters: they illumine the walls no longer; the daylight is too strong for them. So, now, I can hardly remember anything of my dreams: daylight, with you in it, floods them out.

Oh, how are you? Awake? Up? Have you breakfasted? I ask you a thousand things. You are thinking of me, I know: but what are you thinking? I am devoured by curiosity about myself—none at all about you, whom I have all by heart! If I might only know how happy I make you, and just which thing I said yesterday is making you laugh to-day—I could cry with joy over being the person I am.

It is you who make me think so much about myself, trying to find myself out. I used to be most self-possessed, and regarded it as the crowning virtue: and now—your possession of me sweeps it away, and I stand crying to be let into a secret that is no longer mine. Shall I ever know why you love me? It is my religious difficulty; but it never rises into a doubt. You do love me, I know. Why, I don’t think I ever can know.

You ask me the same question about yourself, and it becomes absurd, because I altogether belong to you. If I hold my breath for a moment wickedly (for I can’t do it breathing), and try to look at the world with you out of it, I seem to have fallen over a precipice; or rather, the solid earth has slipped from under my feet, and I am off into vacuum. Then, as I take breath again for fear, my star swims up and clasps me, and shows me your face. O happy star this that I was born under, that moved with me and winked quiet prophecies at me all through my childhood, I not knowing what it meant:—the dear radiant thing naming to me my lover!

As a child, now and then, and for no reason, I used to be sublimely happy: real wings took hold of me. Sometimes a field became fairyland as I walked through it; or a tree poured out a scent that its blossoms never had before or after. I think now that those must have been moments when you too were in like contact with earth,—had your feet in grass which felt a faint ripple of wind, or stood under a lilac in a drench of fragrance that had grown double after rain.

When I asked you about the places of your youth, I had some fear of finding that we might once have met, and that I had not remembered it as the summing up of my happiness in being young. Far off I see something undiscovered waiting us, something I could not have guessed at before—the happiness of being old. Will it not be something like the evening before last when we were sitting together, your hand in mine, and one by one, as the twilight drew about us, the stars came and took up their stations overhead? They seemed to me then to be following out some quiet train of thought in the universal mind: the heavens were remembering the stars back into their places:—the Ancient of Days drawing upon the infinite treasures of memory in his great lifetime. Will not Love’s old age be the same to us both—a starry place of memories?

Your dear letter is with me while I write: how shortly you are able to say everything! To-morrow you will come. What more do I want—except to-morrow itself, with more promises of the same thing?

You are at my heart, dearest: nothing in the world can be nearer to me than you!

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Posted By kruzer on March 23, 2009

Early movies had no stories, no movie stars and no sound. A popular production in the 1890’s was two girls getting undressed by a lake. Right before their last garments came off, a train came by to block your view. In the next scene they were swimming. The three minute film was a hit throughout the country. One old farmer became a big fan and kept paying to see it repeatedly. One day the theater manager came down and said,” Say old timer. Every day you sit and watch the same thing over and over.” “Well sonny, one of these days I’m hoping the train will be late!”

Many of the early film performers were quite content to stay anonymous, reasoning that the new flickers were a novelty that would damage their reputation on the legitimate stage. They were often expected to work all day long. Their duties included hammering nails, painting the set, picking up trash, and lifting heavy equipment. There were no trailers, perks, glamour or big mansions. A casting director might meet a newspaper boy on the street and hire him as his lead actor for five dollars a day. Ladies of the evening were often given jobs simply because they provided their own wardrobes. More often the studios would hire teen age girls who needed no make-up which in the pre-Max Factor days would melt under the hot lights. Not knowing their real identities, the movie going public would give their favorites appropriate nicknames such as “the waif” or “the cowboy”. The growing curiosity surrounding the identities of the actors leads to the birth of movie magazines such as Photoplay in 1909. The new publication conducted a poll asking what kinds of screen stories would people would like to see. Was it romance? Crime? The overwhelming answer was the fans were far more interested in learning about the mysterious figures in the dark. But fearing that their players would demand huge salaries the producers still refused to reveal who they were.

One of the most prominent movie theater owners was a former clothing store manager from Oshkosh, Wisconsin named Carl Laemmle, the eventual founder of Universal Studios. By 1909 he was sick of buying movies from Thomas Edison or European providers. He concluded it was easier and cheaper to produce make his own movies. Laemmle would listen each night as his patrons would leave his theater, many would excitedly discuss the actors on the screen. If he was going to pay his own pictures he would sell them by creating a star.

He wasted no time in hiring a twenty-year-old actress named Florence Lawrence known to the public as the Biograph Girl, named after the studio she worked for. One tale had the four-foot ten Laemmle conducting a midnight raid of Biograph’s offices, where he carried his new charge away over his shoulder. He revealed her name and 250 dollar a week salary to the new fan magazines, and then arranged for her to mysteriously disappear. “My competitors will stop at nothing to ruin me. They’ve kidnapped poor Florence, perhaps even killed her!” he told the press.

For the next few weeks Americans followed the saga in the newspapers, there were several false reports of foul play. One account stated Florence was killed by a streetcar. Then, as pre-arranged by Carl Laemmle, Florence “miraculously” resurfaced in St. Louis were she was mobbed, her clothes ripped off by fans (some of them hired). And so Florence Lawrence gained a huge following. Movies with her name on the marquee started selling like hot cakes.

Laemmle quickly became discouraged by the movie stars he created and the high salary demands that predictably followed. Universal eventually become a horror factory where actors playing the Mummy or the Invisible man could easily be replaced if they asked for too much money. The mogul often tried to exit show business. One time another Florence, vaudeville producer Florence Zigfield was desperately strapped for cash and sent a messenger to Universal to offer Carl Laemmle some wardrobe dresses for five thousand dollars. Not interested. Undeterred, Zigfield asked for a personal meeting. “Mr. Laemmle, how much to buy your studio?” Eagerly the tiny mogul named a price that was in the millions. “I see, well let me talk it over with my lawyers. You should hear from me in a few weeks.” Zigfield got up to leave then paused at the door. “Oh by the way I have some dresses left over from an earlier show. I’m trying to get rid of them for ten thousand dollars.” “Yes of course,” said Laemmle. Zigfield left the lot with his money, but the studio purchase was never consummated.

As for Lawrence, glory was fleeting. A few years after her public breakout, she was working on a film when a fire broke out on the set. The young woman courageously risked her life to save one of her fellow actors and the incident left her temporarily paralyzed. Unable to work she painfully watched the rise of new silent film sirens such as Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. By the time she recovered no one would hire her. She ended up in obscurity and tragically committed suicide years later at the age of 52. But during her appearance in Saint Louis in 1910, Florence Lawrence the world’s first movie star drew a bigger crowd than the President who came to town a week earlier.

Stephen Schochet has worked for over ten years as a tour
guide in Los Angeles, collecting literally hundreds of vintage Hollywood
Stories to tell to appreciative sightseers. A few years ago he decided
to take his tales beyond the tour buses which lead him to embark on
several unique and creative entrepreneurial projects.

First came the audiobook Tales Of
Hollywood. “The idea was to focus on the origins of how famous
things in Hollywood began, and combine it with funny anecdotes about the
stars,” Schochet says. “I wanted to create a forty-five minute ride for
the listener that keeps moving the whole time. It is fast paced
folklore; sometimes when I was doing the research there would be two or
three different versions of an anecdote and I would chose the most
colorful one!”

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